Kanighter is technically an abomination, but a very useful one. The entity known as Kanighter started as a Downington Sphere that had successfully snagged an alien energy pattern, and returned to Earth. The re-entry pattern was faulty and the sphere crash landed in the South China Sea where it was recovered by the ACPS. Unable to crack the encryption on the device, the ACPS intelligence agency brought in a team of technomancers, including the freelancer Richard Kanighter. In attempting to hack the sphere, the creature trapped inside lashed out and drew Kanighter into the sphere, causing a fusion of all three. The mind of Kanighter was fused with the fragment of an outer god, and a metal shell, creating the new being. Kanighter is viciously evil, deeply demented, and if given half a chance, would gladly and gleefully annihilate the entire human race, snuff out the Sun, and pull the plug on the Universe. The Emperor has seen fit to have Kanighter placed in deep hibernation in the Ulan Batar facility known as Pusu Leng, or Cold Plains.

Dex-Starr

The entity known as Dex-Starr started life as a genetically engineered jaguar, augmented with human level intelligence and problem solving skills, part of a clandestine endeavor known as Project Dolittle. The research unit housing Dex-Starr was located on Phobos when the Hellmouth DFE occured. Dex-Starr was inhabited by a dimensional energy being, and began to demonstrate parapsychic powers. Dex-Starr has demonstrated pyrokinesis and biokinesis, using a fusion of these two skills to projectile vomit fire-bile at things that anger it. The entity has escaped capture, and is suspected of living in a martian geofront.

Bat-Mite

Bat-Mite is a VERY POPULAR boppet licensed and sold in the Federation and PRC. The toy robot looks like a child version of the mythical Bat-Man character of American mythology. He encourages kids to follow the rules, do what they are told, and to help him fight the bad guys. The boppet syncs to the Batman channel, free of charge.

Starro

The entity known as Starro is a category 2 teratomorph. It manifests as a starfish shaped monster that when standing on two arms, is a towering 40 meters tall. Despite it's massive size, Starro type teratomorphs mainly smash about, cannot manifest any sort of energy attack, nor do they have any defenses beyond normal organic resiliency. The most dangerous part about a starro manifestation are the mangnaspawn who are capable of swarming through enclosed spaces and routinely demonstrate mind control abilities. Starro meat is commonly harvested and minced into cheap faux fish products.

Beak

Barnell Bohusk was just a kid who ended up on the end of a bad gene-mod. After idolizing avians, he saved enough money for a back-alley Avian biomod and he took it. It wasn't tailored for his genome, and the coding was done cheaply and on the fly, using chopped up bits of other mod codes. The end result was that Bohusk was basically horrifically mutated into a tragic fusion of man and bird, failing to be either. He lived for a few years, unable to garner enough funding or support to reverse the augmentation, and eventually committed suicide to end his suffering. After his death, he became a figure for Gene-Modding Regulation.

Strong Guy

aka Guido Carosella, is a popular figure in the Jersey Cultural Zone. He is a typical beachfront guy, who spends his time attempting to have as much sex as possible, while getting himself into the most comical situations as believably will allow. The original character was based off of a man of the same name who underwent the Claremont Biomodification to make himself as large and muscularly masculine as possible, and ended up making himself look buffoonish and enormous. He was very strong, but contrary to the popular trope of being narcissistic and shallow, Carosella was just a biomod enthusiast, and was considered to be an exemplary fellow. The Strong Guy derived from him has almost nothing to do with him, other than his name and likeness. Carosella has long since retired to a life of comfort in the Caribbean league, where he is free of local fame.

The Orb

Life can interesting for a person who has a massive eyeball in place of a head. The Orb was the sole survivor of a DFE, and one of the side effects of the event was that their right eye consumed all of the matter of their head, and replaced all of it with eye. How the Orb is still alive no one knows as the being technically doesn't have a brain, mouth, nose, and cannot hear, eat, drink, or breath. The Orb communicates through writing and sign language. Orb has repeatedly requested euthanasia, but remains in covert custody as scientists are still trying to figure out how it/he is still alive. Orb demonstrates exceptional vision, and has demonstrated the ability to 'see' infrared, radio, and even aphasic energy patterns, aka auras.

The Maxx

Samuel Keith was a regular guy until he was sucked into a Dimensional Fatigue event. On the other side, he was barfed out into a different reality, one where he is drastically deformed, with hulking muscles and his face has been fixed with a permanent rictus. He is deeply deranged, and fights bestiaries of strange monsters, dreams of his long vanished life and fiance, and is something akin to a mad demigod in this new reality. Sometimes he shifts back to the real world, where for some reason, no one notices his horrific appearance or massive strength, but he lives as a life of squalor and poverty. Keith no longer remembers what is real, what is a dream, and what is his crippling insanity.

Lockheed

Designer pets are all the rage. Dogs and cats are so 20th century. Genimals started as replicas of extinct species and endangered species. After that, it was only a small step to start creating entirely new species. Lockheed is a very expensive personal dragon, or dragonette. At just under a meter long, and massing 8 kilos, it can fly short distances, and can talk in a basic fashion. The creature doesn't actually have the high level intelligence required for witty conversation, rather it has a CogLink in it 's head, and augmented intelligence that allows it to act on it's data feed. Pet dragons are very popular, but given their high price tag, they are the playthings of celebrities and the wealthy, and the number of Lockheed model dragonettes produced for media franchises is actually larger than the number created for private ownership.

Doctor Bong

Doctor Bong is a popular character in the Republic of California, where he is a hero of the Cannabis culture. Serialized in 'Stoner Feeds' where the SimSense viewer gets and electronic high (simulating the euphoric high state) Doctor Bong spends his days getting high, and duking it out with the enemies of Chill and the opponents of recreational pharmaceuticals. He is a heroic 'Everyman' who gains magical powers from taking hits from his Mystic Space Bong, including flight, intangibility, hyperwisdom, mind and emotion control, and the ability to conjure and banish material objects.

Super Zombies

The zombie genre didn't go away in the Cosmic Era, but rather it became more frightening. In the Cosmic Era there are super soldier, giants, parapsychics, cyborgs, and more that simply didn't exist in the heyday of Petroleum Era entertainment. The Super Zombie genre taps into the theme of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, and the secret project unleashes death, the undead, and nihilism on the world, with not just the classic shuffling and shambling undead, and more than the the running zombie, but corpses lusting to feast on the flesh of the living, but still retaining superhuman abilities. It remains an underground genre, as it is rooted in the justifiable fear of arcanotechnology.

Big Wheel

Jackson Weele was a geofront tinkerer who tired of the constant abuse heaped on him and other clocksmiths who lived in the geofronts. Rather than take the abuse, or the predictable building of a horde of fighting bots, Weele built a robot 'wheel suit' that was somewhere between patchwork mobile armor, and a robot that he could drive. The Big Wheel made an appearance at several underground gathering, where he was able to disrupt the goings on and scatter the chinpira and made men of the geofronts. He thought that has was going to succeed but underestimated his foes. Big Wheel met his end on the business end of a Chinpira assassination squad who gunned him down in his apartment. His robotic 'wheel suit' was destroyed, but not before he pumped the schematics across the gray band CogNet.

Mojo

The entity known as Mojo is one of the most successful and wealthy entertainment franchise creators in the Cosmic Era. Barely recognizable as human anymore, Mojo is the studio exec of studio execs, and lives in a life support unit. It's body is massive, 3 meters long and close to 400 kilograms in weight. Mojo's brain is directly wired into the CogNet, where it creates streams of new code that are administered and handled by cadres of professional programmers and synthetic intelligences. It is demanding, petulant, acts like a spoiled child and a primadonna all at once. To keep itself sated, Mojo has multiple sets of pubic nerves terminating in male, female, and entirely new sexual pleasure organs, as well as a massive tolerance to and dependence on narcotic substances. Mojo is remorseless and thrives on the most base and vile programming, but it's handlers clear the chaff from the wheat, creating the trope sitcoms and reality series that have made Mojo and it's host hypercorp wealthy.

An Amero-Nipponese professional wrester, Kintaro has undergone a modified version of the Clairemont Biomod, a basic Tiger neko augmentation, and the dramatic addition of two additional arms as well as the associated nerve clusters to use them. In the professional fighter ring, Kintaro has demonstrated himself a master of grappling, submission holds, and the progenitor of the now infamous Double Nelson Hold (a full Nelson hold, but only deliverable by a person for 4 arms). Despite having excellent performance in the ring, Kintaro has not yet managed to win a World Title or Championship. In continental matches, he is among the strongest opponents, but in the International Tournaments, he is known as the Paper Tiger. While strong and fast, his move set is based entirely off of biological and muscular strength. He is simply not in the same category as the parapsychic and cybernetic fighters.

Shujinko

Nominally a monk from the Chinese White Lotus Society, Shujinko spent years learning the basics of Chi combat, aka parapsychic hand to hand. He is not terribly good at it, and took more to the path of the mystic despite the desire to be a great warrior. His skill was greatly increased after coming in contact with an entity he believed to be benevolent. After teaching Shujinko it's own application of chi arts, he discovered that the entity, the Onaga, was actually a demon (or negative extradimensional entity) that was more interested in spreading harm that good. It intended for Shujinko to create a dojo of his own, and then to expand it out to where it would rival the White Lotus society, or even more maliciously, rival the Lin Keui ninja clan. The wayward monk has fled his old home and now travels as an mendicant and does good works trying to atone for his deal with Onaga, using the entity's power and training against it.

Kobra

A product of the McDojo craze, Kobra has learned the anglicized version of martial arts (most of the fighting, none of the philosophy) and modernized Compact Form Martial Arts (CFMA) that reduce a martial art down into a handful of moves and stances. This is the sort of fighting taught at McDojos like Kobra Kai, one of the leading franchise gyms. Given the preponderance of blond headed anglo-americans who attend such gyms, they have been pushed into a single stereotype, and are all Kobras. Kobras know a few kicks and strikes, and a few basic blocks. Other than this, they are easily beaten by actual martial arts students, but they are typically able to dominate people not trained in martial arts. Kobras are frequently street thugs, bullies, and 'tough guys' who like to indulge in a bit of violence for sport.

Related: Dan Hibiki - celebrity McDojo Franchiser, smiles and throws the big thumbs up and fights passably well in demonstration tournaments. He is more celebrity that sensei, and most of his fights are rigorously choreographed. He has a background in entertainment media, and used this to leverage his McDojo franchise, Dan Hibiki Dojos

Blaze

The entity known as Blaze was formerly a card carrying Wage Slave who was caught up in a Dimensional reactor explosion in Central America. The hapless individual instead of being killed was imbued with a massive amount of cosmic power, and neither the training nor the willpower to control it. Blaze staggered around for hours after the event under full parapsychic burn. His body (or her body, their identity is unknown) has been converted to condensed plasma and is in a constant state of flux. They are literally made of compressed fire held together by the parapsychic conduit and the soul of technician, engineer, or possibly janitor who was among those killed in the blast. Blaze has no fighting skill, is highly disoriented, and governed more by animalistic impulses than reason. The being was beaten and captured after being driven into the plasma bottle of a damaged fusion reactor. Blaze is currently incarcerated on Mercury. The being is confined inside a fusion vessel and being tapped for energy production.

Meat

The abomination that is Meat was formerly a worker at the San Alamos Laboratory, where she was a computer engineer and systems administrator. She was involved in a DFE that unleashed a swarm of flesh eating meta-mollusks and almost died. Why she is still alive is a mystery, but Meat has had her skin, most of her organs, and roughly half of her muscle mass eaten away by the creatures, but remains alive. Her body has proven resistant to medical treatment, but in a state of constant pain, and an adrenal induced fight or flight mode. Attempts to communicate with Meat have failed, and it is assumed that there is simply nothing left inside her head but howling insanity from having been partially consumed alive.

Motaro

Motaro is among the most heavily modified soldiers in the EuroZone armed forces.

War Machine is a guy in a high end power armor suit festooned with mundane weapons. While able to match Iron Man in armor and mobility, War Machine eschews the repulsor blasters and instead uses mundane hardware. In the CE, War Machine is a guy in a power armor suit using retro-tech weapons. As energy weapons are higher maintenance than conventional firearms, War Machine is closer to a wastelander warlord decked out in guns because half of his gear can't be fixed, or has depleted power cells.

2. Doorman

Caught up in a teleportation test failure, the Doorman is able to create short range gates, using his own body as the gateway. While useful, this power is severely limited by the fact that the longer the distance of the gate, the greater the strain is on him. More than a few feet gated is enough to knock him unconscious, and a gate that is more than a few dozen feet would easily kill him. Teleportation doesn't come cheap.

3. Dazzler

Dazzler is the code name given to a high chaotic parapsychic caught in a permanent burn state. Formerly a musician and performance artist, she has turned into a human sized psionic emitter. She generates pulsing waves of energy that can only be codified in arcanotech terms.

Thermal lances - deals damage as is exposed to a cutting torch of thermal lance

Corrosive lances - major acid damage

Electric lance - subjected to high tension power line electrical current

Immortality isn't all that keen for the self proclaimed Mr Immortal. Despite his best efforts, and after almost 2 centuries, he is still alive, and physiologically 23 years old. One of the earliest victims of a DFE, Mr Immortal has undergone countless tests and examinations to discover the means of his immortality. For the first few decades it was amusing, that he could survive being killed over and over. After the first century, the novelty had worn off, everyone he knew growing up was dead, he was still 23, and he had experienced things as horrible as being eaten alive, incineration, and even being splattered after a six mile free fall from orbit. After 15 decades, Mr Immortal became suicidal, and has been dismembered as per his wishes, and left in a catatonic state.

Yeah, on the carcinoprotein, NASA is working on cultured salmon tumors to provide a self replenishing food supply for astronauts bound for Mars. I thought it was horrific, and something the CE would totally exploit for a food source. There is no reason to eat people when you can culture and cultivate tumors Go to Comment

Transitioning from a corporeal lifestyle to a digital one, voluntarily entering the Matrix as a social and economic decision. A renaissance of virtual culture following the death of the previous physical/analog world culture Go to Comment

There have been plenty of cashless societies, with Star Trek being a good example of a positive example and the slave based economies of the past being negative examples. And that's what the freemium economy is, it is a form of economic slavery. It doesn't matter what the people do, they cannot do business between themselves, everything has to go to the credit system, to the corporate exchanges and such.

Cash is a relic of the Petroleum Era, and it is offensive.

Asking a resident of the Cosmic Era if they would like some money, some cold hard cash, is the same as asking Native Americans if they would like some trade beads or horse blankets. Capitalism and the personal pursuit of wealth is considered crude, barbaric, and destructive. Go to Comment

Rodenberry was a progressive liberal hippie, and TNG greatly improved when he was no longer hands on involved in the show. While he had some good ideas, like racial integration and international cooperation (it's easy to forget that Uhura was among the first if not the first black female characters in an ensemble cast show, and the Russian Chekov was an officer on what was tantamount to an American spaceship, during the Cold War). He also had some bad ideas that hamstrung the show, like the Federation having a no currency economy, everyone just did what they wanted, and that basic elements of human conflict were verbotten, as a hallmark of his utopian ideals

But it was the first and biggest example I could think of where people did their jobs and there was no paycheck. Federation has rank, but there is no pay grade.

The emergence of the freemium economy is not a natural evolution. It is what happens when you have a coalition of oligarchs, backed by secret societies (the more spook like Anunnaki) and bound by a broken world economy and a population that is small, predominantly socialist, and supported by massive industrial automation and replicator like polyforges.

There is a smear campaign against capitalism, and despite all the bells and whistles, technogadgets and wizardry, the Cosmic Era is functionally feudal in nature. Wealth is concentrated exclusively at the top, and everyone else is a serf (restricted in movement, restricted in what they can possess, stuck in whatever position they are born in). Fitting in with the Ocaslan model, society is made static to ensure longterm stability, and capitalism runs contrary to this. Capitalism allows people to change their economic status, and large numbers of people can force changes in the market, despite each having not that much. This can be a good thing, driving economic engines, and it can be bad like student loan debt and the housing bubble.

So, the past, the economic wealth and prosperity of the capitalist free world is burdened with the blame for the disasters that befell the world, from the Resource Wars, to the environmental disasters that followed. The pursuit of wealth and personal property is shown to be hand in hand with burning the world and poisoning the sky. Go to Comment

One of the crises in modern capitalism is the act of showrooming. Customers will go to a brick and mortar store, inspect specific items that they are interested in purchasing, and will then purchase said items from an online retailer at a lower cost, since said online retailer doesn't have the cost of a store to support.

In the Cosmic Era this is how most non-consumables shopping is handled. There are no more brick and mortar stores, and the durable goods providers merely have showrooms for customers to come look at their goods. They can order the goods from the showroom, but there is no stock, no inventory, no servicing, just the showroom. With polyforges and automation, almost everything is made on a Just in Time basis. There are no warehouses or inventory centers fulfilling said orders (there are some exceptions).

After visiting the showroom, the customer uses their multikard to order whatever goods they want. The order is placed, and the items in question are produced. This goes in the face of Petroleum Era commercialism, as it violates two basic tennets: planned obsolescence, and impulse purchases. Most ordered goods will arrive in a matter of hours to days, overriding the impulse purchase with having to wait for the gratification of acquisition. Likewise, in the case of durable and sundry goods, there isn't a cycle of replacing oldness with new hotness. There are upgrades, and additions, but something like replacing a smartphone every 1-2 years is simply offensive. Gadgets are expected to last a decade. Appliances last a generation, and so forth. The wheels and engines of the economy aren't churning out junk to feed a junk grinder. Go to Comment

In the Cosmic Era, when someone buys a durable good or gadget, is it generally expected that the previous gadget they owned will be traded in as part of the remuneration process. The old item is taken back and it is either refurbished and resold if it is in good shape, or it is recycled for its components and used to make the next iteration of items. This process lessens the credit cost of the items being purchased, and is part of the materials handling and recycling system inside of arcologies and other megastructures. Hoarding and stockpiling are hard to accomplish, as failure to remunerate goods sees credit scores drop.

One of the things that stuck out in my mind the last time I read Brave New World was Bernard and Linda flying around in a helicopter. In light of the death of expertise and self driving vehicles, something as complicated, clattering, and dangerous as a helicopter isn't going to survive into the future. Kazes fill the spot that light civilian helicopters once occupied. I would totally agree with there being an autonomous system where you dont actually ever pilot a kaze so much as you tell it where you want to go, and the onboard LAI flies the craft under guidance from the local airspace controller. Go to Comment

Chimp - insult, lower than homo sapiens, one ruled by base biological desire, one lacking courage, intelligence, or the sophistication expected of Xenus society. Simian terms are also used as racial slurs against homo sapiens.

Codex - term used to refer to an individual's genes, a representation of self, and their potential. Insulting a codex is grounds for a challenge, such as asking if the codex was known to be damaged before production, or if it was discovered afterwards? Genetic hubris.

Frag - insult, incomplete as a fragment, one who has failed in their given role. To frag - to fail. Fragger - one who failed. Fragged - broken or otherwise compromised. Fragman, a person who only knows misery and failure.

Freeborn - a human born through normal sexual reproduction, technically used as an insult towards Homo Sapiens and Homo Novus augments. Also known as fuckborn, lowborn, and genesludgers.

Game of Challenge - a game of challenge is any sort of game fought out between two or more interests that lacks an outside reward such as rank points, settling of grievances, promotions, and so forth. These are a step above training matches, and typically done in a friendly manner.

Game of Grievance
- rather than resorting to physical violence, emotional outbursts or
otherwise disruptive behavior when there is a problem, homo xenus is
conditioned to handle interpersonal disputes through the use of CogNet
dueling and 'card battle games'. This allows hostility to be defused,
teaches each member to be as prepared as possible, and that those who
cannot win fights shouldn't start them.

Game of Raiding - While materialism is seen as not just a hallmark of the Petroleum Era, but of Homo Sapiens in its entirety, homo xenus has a completely different approach. When a resource is in contention between two factions, such as two sibcos fighting over the better bunk facility, they will resort to games of raiding. These simulated battles home martial and tactical skills without inflicting actual casualties or injuries, and are played out in virtual environments. They are similar to the FPS melees that are currently popular in console games.

Geneseed - a sample of a xenus' genetic code, in the context of being used to create a new sibco of homo xenus. Also a reference to genetic legacy, and the asexual reproductive process.

Loot - anything gained from the defeat of a foe, agreed to before the start of a game, or the commencement of a physical competition. Colloquially translates to 'that which is desireable' or 'the spoils of conflict'

Sibco - sibling company. Rather than solo, homo xenus is born and raised in batches or companies. These are treated as siblings and are the only family connection the species demonstrates.

Trial of Position - Where disputes are settled with virtual games, promotions and evaluations are handled through holosim situations. In a trial of position, the challenger seeks to raise their level within the homo xenus society. The 'defender' is a teacher or other administrator, and typically has the upper hand, so that an aspiring xenus cannot simply win through dull brute force, and must be cunning and clever instead.

Trueborn - a human born through computer engineering and genetic manipulation of donor genetic material, this term can be applied to homo novus engineered from birth, and automatically applies to all homo xenus members.

An much more extreme modification, the Morzh mod demonstrates the extent to which the Neo-Soviets have mastered genertic engineering. The morzh phenoclade from the waist up is predominantly human, even if the features are blunt and crude looking. From the waist down, the morzh has more in common with marine mammals than with humans. The legs are fused together into a tail, and the feet are spread out into a tail fin, giving them strength and control moving around underwater. Unlike the rusalka, the morzh mod is designed for deep sea operations, and spending extended amounts of time underwater. Where the Rusalka cannot go much further than 200 meters, a morzh can free dive as deep as 1000 meters, and can do so in freezing temperature water.

There are several hundred Eurasian morzh, but they are all located in arctic seacologies or deep sea operations. In these locations they operate and inspect underwater listening and snooping equipment, spy on ACPS and Coalition underwater facilities, and salvage/loot underwater wrecks.

In the greater scheme of things, the Atlantic Federation is winning, because they have achieved a high level of space dominance. No one has as many spaceships as they do, and no one else has ships as big either. It's sort of like the US and carriers. The ACPS has largely won the war for Mars, having established a large ground force and regional dominance. Their power is divided between China and Mars, which somewhat limits what they can do. The Eurasian Alliance, aka the Neo-Soviet Union has fallen behind in both the space race, and the war for Mars, leaving them somewhat stranded on Earth. Of course no one has major dominance on Earth. The Atlantic Federation is contested on all three continents it claims land on. The ACPS is surrounded by hostiles, most notably the Pacific Rim coalition (which despite high tech, has been a regional loser) the Free Indian State, Nippon, etc.

Be strong where your enemy is weak. The Neo-Soviets are almost completely uncontested in the world oceans. The only places where they aren't in charge is the Caribbean, where aerial warships, shallow waters, and the Federation's Caribbean League/Atlantis state prevent dominance.

What could be fun and a game changer? Space Submarines. Submersible spaceships. Go to Comment